I am an organic chemist at the Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Biotechnology of the University of Perugia. After completing the Master’s degree in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Perugia, in 2013, I obtained the Ph.D. in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the same department, in 2017. Then, I moved to the research group of Prof. Gabriele Cruciani at the Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Biotechnology of the University of Perugia, where I have been working since 2018. Beside academic education, in 2010 I spent three months at the GlaxoSmithKline (Harlow, Essex, UK) for a training in analytical chemistry and pharmaceutical development as an Erasmus under-graduate student, while as PhD student I visited for four months the medicinal chemistry laboratories of the Spanish national research council at the Instituto de Quimica Médica – Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Ciéntificas (IQM-CSIC), Madrid, Spain.

So far, I was involved in different projects in the field of organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and drug discovery. In particular, my research activity was focused on the design of new chemical entities endowed with pharmaceutical relevance as antivirals and anticancers, on the development of synthetic procedures for the preparation of the designed compounds, on hit-to-lead optimization, and SAR studies. More recently, my research activity has been devoted to the design and synthesis of proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs), which represents an emerging class of compounds aimed at revolutionizing drug discovery. In particular, the research activity was aimed at exploiting PROTAC technology for the degradation of different disease-related target proteins, such as androgen receptor (prostate cancer) but also for the development of anti-SARS-CoV-2 agents. In the case of PROTACs for prostate cancer, the fruitful scientific collaboration with the Montelino Therapeutics LLC led to the identification of promising compounds.